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Root cause identification.

By Ed Bones

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 19May2009
Word count: 527
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Whenever quality professionals gather to discuss quality management issues, sooner or later the issue of 'root cause' becomes the topic. There seems to be a well held view that if you work hard enough, or maybe long enough, eventually the 'root cause' of your problem will be found. Inbuilt in this belief is the presumption that root cause is the key to proper corrective action, and that it is an absolute fact of life. But is it?

What do we mean by root cause? In theory we mean the one cause, that corrected/removed would be sufficient to prevent the recurrence of the failing we first observed. However, when pushed most people adhere to the view that one simple cause for any specific failing is just too simple a concept to be true.

There are two 'always present' exhortations in the problem solving literature.

- Don't jump to conclusions

- Ensure you find the root cause before taking action.

The first is fine, I can find no reason to argue against the philosophy analyzing the situation in order to implement a fact based solution. The second can be a recipe for ongoing analysis and debate, with no satisfactory solution at the close.

Root cause as a concept is closely linked to another, that of relativity, which states that the state of a situation or body is not absolute but relative, it depends on the observer as much as it depends on the observed. At its simplest, imagine waiting for a bus to get to the station for the commuter train. The bus is late, you miss the train, are late for work and are fired for poor time keeping.

Your employer thinks the root cause of your dismissal is time keeping. You think it is because buses never run on time, the bus company thinks it is the terrible road conditions or the quality of the drivers that they have to employ, and so it goes on.

There is therefore seldom a single root cause for a failing, in part because the perceived failing isn't constant.

The emphasis on Root Cause has for many years been a feature of training provided for QA people and particularly auditors. Auditors are exhorted to 'identify the root cause' when reporting audit findings. This search for the single cause of a failing has led to significant time wasting while the real issue, 'what are we going to do about the problem', remains unsolved and even unaddressed.

In the above example the employer saw a root cause to his problem, and took action. The employee was aware that buses had a tendency to run late, and took no action. As for the buses - it really doesn't matter much in this case, since they didn't seem to have a problem of their own!

Root cause - it depends where you are in the cycle of failure correction, and therefore what you are actually capable of doing to solve the problem as you see it. Your root cause may not be, indeed seldom is, the same as the root cause identified by others seeing a different occurrence in the same sequence of events

Ed. Bones is a chartered quality professional, an IRCA registered Lead Auditor, and is a senior partner with Meon Consulting Group, providing expert audit and consultant services for ISO9001 & ISO14001 management systems. The company web site provides detailed information, and includes the offer of FREE Advice.

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